


Nothing But Time

by LookingForDroids



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Clothed Sex, F/F, Psionic Bondage, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:27:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25944328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids
Summary: A captured ship, a lost fight, and one more play in a game that can’t last forever.
Relationships: Aradia Megido/Vriska Serket
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Nothing But Time

The noise of gunfire ended minutes ago, though Vriska isn’t sure how many. Time always goes weird when she knows she’s losing, too fast and too slow at once, and details press in: the cut-off wail of an alarm and fire-suppressant foam raining down in one corner, scorches on the walls and the sweat-slick grip of the gun in her hand. The thing is useless now, like all the rest of her defenses, drained of power in the last flurry of heavy fire. The bridge is flooded with dim emergency lighting, and the recycled atmosphere stinks of smoke and burned wire. Her crew’s resistance collapsed the instant her mind control faltered, and now the losers have scattered like squeakbeasts, making for the escape pods or groveling in surrender. Those she can still reach are bound securely. She’s on her own.

That’s nothing new, of course. She always has been. The only surprising thing about any of this is that she always thought it would be Terezi who finally caught up to her.

It’s Megido, because everyone’s luck has to run out sometime. Vriska holds ground as she advances, stepping easily through smoke and over debris, smiling like every wiggler’s nightmare of the Demoness brought to life. The Empire’s propaganda would tell her that this shouldn’t be difficult – rust against cerulean, weakness defying strength – but she’s never put much stock in that shit. No matter how often she tries, she can’t slip through the seamless walls of Megido’s mind, and with that electrified whip lashing the air in a ceaseless, unpredictable cyclone, she can’t get close enough for strength to matter. 

It shouldn’t be difficult, but Vriska has never liked easy. With a twist of her arm, the Octet falls from a concealed pocket to her palm. She sends the dice spinning, only to see them plucked from the air in cloud of red light. She replaces them with a curving sword, feints right and darts left and scores a line of red along Megido’s side as she ducks beneath the whirling arc of the whip. She hears a gasp of pain, sees Megido stagger, and as she steps forward, sword raised and ready, she thinks for a moment that she might still be able to win this. Then the whip flicks, catches, coils around her cyborg arm, and the blade clatters from her spasming hand as the world disappears into the white emptiness of pain.

Megido jerks her forward, to the floor. She barely feels the impact. Her body arcs, twitching. She bites her own tongue, flooding her mouth with blood – and then Megido does something to the whip’s handle, and the pain abruptly vanishes. In its absence, Vriska collapses. She can’t help it. Her head is spinning, and every muscle in her body is a mess of residual tremors, and even willpower can’t do much against that. Before she can force herself back to her feet, Megido lifts her to her knees with bands of ruddy light instead; they close around her limbs and waist, weightless and painless, and fit snug as a collar around her neck. She twists against them, spitting curses, until Megido moves close, cups her chin in a rust-warm, calloused palm, and holds her still.

The first thing Vriska thinks, looking up into that calm, merciless face, is that Terezi will be furious that it wasn’t her. The second is that somewhere in the emptiness between skirmishes and spaceport rendezvous, Megido – _Aradia_ – got old. She’s only twenty-eight sweeps, but there’s grey in her curling hair, sweeping back from her horns, and deep lines mark the corners of her mouth and the red embers of her eyes. This new difference between them is a shock that unsettles something deeper than the loss of a ship, but if Aradia notices, she doesn’t seem to care. Over Vriska’s head, she issues commands to her own crew – psionics, all of them, doubtless hand-picked and impervious to the touch of Vriska’s mind. Vriska ignores them. None of them matter. There’s only one troll right now who does.

Aradia isn’t ignoring her, though her attention seems to be all on salvage. The careful pressure of her fingertips is proof of that, her claws resting lightly over unbroken skin. So is the power holding Vriska immobile. The psionic manacles don’t tighten when she tests them, don’t spark or sting. They’re simply there, and even that‘s enough to leave her trying not to fidget, too aware that she’s trapped, on display in her defeat, and that she’s already getting wet. She lost. It happens. It doesn’t scare her, because she knows how this game is played. You don’t kill your kismesis. You take everything they care about, everything they’ve stolen and won and struggled for – Vriska can hear her over the intercom, telling her crew that they have permission to _dismantle_ the fucking engine block – and then you let them slink away to rebuild it all, because you’re not a whole person without them around to balance you. Terezi would pity her and hang her, and never forgive herself for it. Aradia’s going to let her go.

Vriska thinks against her will of the age in Aradia’s face, and wonders how many more times it will be before the last. But who cares about that? It’s in the future, and fuck the future. This is now.

“Miss me?” Vriska says, smiling through her own blood, and Aradia looks down like she’d forgotten her presence. She hadn’t, of course, but gog, she makes it convincing. She gives one last order – telling some gormless rusty where to find the good contraband, _fuck_ – then lets go of Vriska’s face long enough to pull her to her feet. She does it with physical force, not psionics, and Vriska can tell from the strain in her arms that it’s not easy. Vriska does nothing to make it easy, but when it’s done, she stands instead of slumping, brushing off the pinprick pain of blood rushing back to still-shaky legs. Aradia rises on psionic currents until she’s at a level to look Vriska in the eye, but Vriska is the one who leans forward, as far as the band of red light around her throat will allow, and kisses her.

Time seems for a moment to stutter to a stop, leaving them motionless in the center of the ruined bridge, before Aradia pulls Vriska forward and kisses back. Her mouth is hot, open and insistent, her tongue sliding past Vriska’s lips to test the edges of her fangs. Vriska bites and tastes blood, and Aradia shoves her back against a sparking control panel until they’re pressed together, hip to hip. Her body is a compact line of heat and muscle, her grip on Vriska’s arms uncompromising, and that’s her bulge, Vriska realizes, caught between them and moving freely beneath the dark fabric of her skirt.

“Shit, you _did_ miss me,” Vriska says, when she can breathe again. The low sound that slips from Aradia’s throat in response is enough to make Vriska wonder whether she’s been in that state through their entire fight. From the moment her crew forced open the airlocks, maybe, and that thought is so much hotter than anything should be. Those loose, heavy skirts she favors have got to be good for something. Vriska laughs, angles her hips up, and says, “Going to take me prisoner? Or would you rather just take me right here?”

She gets her answer when Aradia slips a hand between them, cupping her through her trousers, pressing two fingers up along the opening seam of her nook. That’s all it takes. Her bulge spills out, slick and heavy, filling the curve of Aradia’s palm.

“Really, Megido?” she says, rolling her hips into Aradia’s hand. “In front of your crew?”

“They don’t care,” Aradia says evenly, and Vriska’s pretty sure she’s not lying. “We all have something we want. Hespen gets first pick of your armory. Izaazi gets to reduce your helmsblock to particulate. And I get this.”

 _This_ being Aradia’s mouth closing on hers again, harder this time, and the buttons on her trousers undone one by one, until Aradia can reach inside and grasp her at the root. The world goes blank again, but not with pain, though Aradia’s claws scrape a little as she strokes, and her teeth are tiny knifepoints in Vriska’s lip. The floor shakes from a muffled explosion further inside the ship – Izaazi doing their thing, maybe, turning her livelihood into so much space trash – but before she can let it get to her, one more stupid loss compounding loss, Aradia is tugging her trousers down over her hips, leaving her exposed and writhing before the curious lookstubs of any crewtroll who happens to pass by.

She’s half expecting Aradia to bend her over the console then and there, but that’s not what happens. Aradia steps back, out of Vriska’s field of vision, though her psionic hold doesn’t weaken. She’s gone a long time – long enough that Vriska could almost suspect that the point of this exercise is to leave her hanging with her bulge out, except for the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor – and when she returns, she’s got the captain’s chair with her. She takes Vriska by the arms again and pushes her firmly into the padded seat, then stands above her, considering. After a moment, she adjusts the restraints, tugging Vriska’s legs just a little farther apart.

Vriska laughs theatrically at that, but damned if she can’t appreciate the gesture. This is the last time she’s ever going to sit here, and she’s doing it with her pants bunched down around her thighs, leaking a trickle of genetic material onto the leather cushions. At least she lost to an enemy with style. Aradia lifts her skirts almost daintily and climbs into the chair, kneeling over Vriska and looking down, arranging the dark fabric to conceal them both. If Vriska could move, she’d rise to meet her, rake claws down her arms and sink teeth into her shoulder and make her bleed for everything she’s taken, but it doesn’t matter what she would do, because she can’t. All she can do is wait.

So she waits, counting the seconds as Aradia settles in slow above her: _two_ , as her bulge curls around the inside of Aradia’s knee, and _four_ , as it brushes the soft skin of her thigh, before a psionic tendril grips it and holds it twisting in place. She makes it to seven before Aradia sinks the rest of the way down, engulfing her in wet heat, and for one brief instant all she can think is that the bitch did that on purpose. Then Aradia digs her claws into Vriska’s shoulders and rocks forward with a contented sigh, and it’s impossible to think of anything else.

Even then, the only thing Aradia allows her is patience. Her pace is slow, her smile lazy and satisfied as she takes her pleasure on Vriska’s bulge like she’s got nothing but time. 

She doesn’t. Up close, every line on her face is mapped in red warning light, and there’s no trickery or treasure that can alter that. Terezi would call it an injustice. Vriska knows it’s just shit luck, but out of everything she’s lost today, crew and cargo and pride, it’s _that_ that makes her angry enough to snap her teeth closed on empty air like she could catch the throat of the universe between them. She twists in her bonds, snarls, gives herself over to helplessness. She can’t dig her claws into Aradia’s back, so she tears at the arm-rests instead, a promise of what she means to do when she’s free again. Aradia watches her with head tilted back, and that smug smile doesn’t shift, but something does; the next roll of her hips is faster, her next exhalation a low, barely-audible growl. Her legs tighten around Vriska’s sides, and she grinds down hard, still methodical even as her composure starts to slip. 

Despite all that, Vriska is still the one who comes first. Aradia’s hands move from her shoulders to her face, and it takes her without warning, like the whip had, a seizing force. There’s the sensation of work-calloused palms against her skin, Aradia’s nook rippling around her and Aradia’s claws pressed into her temples just deeply enough for pain, and before she can stop herself she’s spilling rhythmically all over the captain’s chair and her ruined trousers. Above her, Aradia rides with mouth half-open and eyes closed, dignity discarded in favor of need, until she follows in a flood of heat. She’s almost quiet, but that _almost_ is a victory, and when she slips off the chair a moment later, Vriska is sure her legs are shaking.

You’d never know to look at her, standing serene and looking down; the only sign on her is a trace of cerulean at the hem of her skirt, and even that could be mistaken for blood. But Vriska doesn’t have to look to know; she might be a sprawled mess, her thighs still bare and her clothing soaked through, but half that mess is Aradia’s. It seems for a moment like that could be a victory too, until Aradia bends low, curls a possessive hand in Vriska’s hair and kisses her one last time like she might lay claim to all of it.

“I think I’m done here,” she says as she rises, like she doesn’t have rust-red stains drying on the inside of her own thighs. “I’ve told them to leave you a functional escape pod. If they haven’t, we’ll have communication channels open.”

If she’s hoping to hear Vriska beg, she’ll be disappointed. Escape pods can be repaired or jury rigged, and this ship’s got secrets still unspoiled, but the truth is, she doesn’t think any of that will be needed. Aradia doesn’t cheat. She doesn’t need to. 

Another explosion rattles the walls, and a triumphant whoop echoes down the corridors. Whatever. This ship is a piece of crap anyway, and Vriska was getting bored of it. Might as well that crazy fucker have their fun. 

Aradia hits a button on her radio and tells her crew to wrap it up here, because they’re done and shipping out, and then she takes her own advice and turns to leave without a backward glance. That’s just how it always is, with her. Nothing personal, Vriska would say, except that both of them know exactly how personal it is. The psionic restraints dissolve as she walks away, but Vriska doesn’t move, except to sink down a little deeper into the cushions of the chair. She’s tempted by the thought of a hidden knife and an unguarded back, but only in the abstract. She lost this round, but she means to take the next, and Aradia’s inevitable crushing defeat will be sweeter for the waiting.

“Megido,” she calls, just before Aradia makes it to the exit. To her surprise, Aradia turns back, and for a moment Vriska just watches her, trying to memorize the way she looks now, because when they meet again she won’t look the same. She’d planned to say something clever and cutting, or just send her off with some smarmy pitch cliche that would stick in her mind and throat until it’s time for a rematch. But when she opens her mouth, what comes out of it is, “You better fucking haunt me when you’re gone.”

Aradia blinks, frowns, opens her mouth like she means to say something and she’s not sure what. Vriska managed to surprise her, then. She never has before, but there’s a first time for everything. Score one for Team Serket.

“No promises,” she says. “But if I want to, I will.”

Then she steps through the door and out of sight, leaving Vriska with a scrap-worthy ship, a lot of space to cross before she reaches the closest neutral station and a long, long stretch of future waiting. Not that she cares, of course. It‘s no big thing, and she’s got nothing to worry about, without cargo to waste her time on or crew to drag her down. She should probably thank Aradia for taking all that dead weight off her hands. But as she runs an idle thumb along the inside of her leg, mingling red and blue, a though occurs to her. Aradia makes no promises, but Vriska has known her long enough to guess what it is she wants. Enough to gamble on, at least, and if she’s going to lay her money down on something, it might as well be this: she’ll always be haunted, and never on her own.


End file.
